Amidst the ongoing controversy surrounding Bankless, a cryptocurrency media outlet, and its associated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) BanklessDAO, there are plans by the founders to disconnect the brand from the DAO.
David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams, co-founders of Bankless, are intending to present a governance proposal to BanklessDAO to establish a separation between the two entities. Additionally, they announced via X (formerly Twitter) on November 26 their intention to burn all BanklessDAO (BANK) tokens under this proposal.
The decision to separate Bankless from BanklessDAO came in response to community criticisms of BanklessDAO's request for funding from Arbitrum. BanklessDAO sought 1.82 million Arbitrum (ARB) tokens from Arbitrum on November 20, amounting to roughly $1.8 million at the time, which drew concern from the community.
Hoffman expressed concern that BanklessDAO's ambitious proposal seemed to rely on the Bankless brand's influence, which the DAO does not create, own, or have rightful claim to benefit from.
The BanklessDAO community raised objections, citing the lack of clarity on how the substantial sum of nearly 2 million ARB tokens would be used for content creation. Responding to the critique, BanklessDAO committed to revising the proposal by reducing the grant duration to three months and providing specific key performance indicators and milestones. This sparked heated discussions between proposal supporters and detractors across social media platforms.
Critics, including pseudonymous Delegate Cash CEO Foobar, accused the Bankless founders of attempting to disassociate BanklessDAO from Bankless to seemingly gain unwarranted legitimacy. Bitcoin enthusiast Pledditor further criticized the founders, referencing their promotion of projects like Nexo and questioning their financial transparency.
Adams defended their actions, highlighting that Bankless’ operations were sustained by paying subscribers and clarified misunderstandings regarding payments made to projects like Nexo.
Established in 2019, Bankless is a crypto media firm advocating the adoption and awareness of bankless money systems. In May 2021, it launched Bankless DAO to organize and promote bankless media and introduced the BANK token. In a separate move in April 2023, the Bankless founders announced plans to raise a $35 million venture capital fund aimed at seeding Web3 companies.
